Oil, gas, chemical and power plant industries are constantly seeking for efficient in-situ detection of fugitive gas leakages. Most of the gases used (e.g., methane, propane, benzene, etc.) in these industries are highly explosive when mixed with air. Moreover, most of the leaking gases belong to the category of greenhouse gases and therefore contributing to climate instability and temperature increase. Further, the gas leakage problem is causing profit-losses to the industries thereof.
Typically, regulations in most of the developed countries require constant monitoring of equipment in order to control and reduce to minimum gas leakage. Today there are many different products that facilitate detection of volatile organic components (VOC) and other gases. Most of these products belong to a category named ‘sniffers’. Sniffers provide accurate gas concentration readings but suffer from extensive labor related to the inspection process that has to be performed locally in close proximity with pipes valves or any other gas carrying components.
Optical gas detection systems are also known. Different gases are characterized by different absorption lines in different spectral bands, which may enable detecting different gases using different filters. Typically, optical gas detection systems include cooled detector and cooled band-pass filter(s), e.g., both located in a camera's dewar. The sensitivity of such systems is limited to a gas of a single type (or limited types of gases), due to, for example, disability of replacing the cooled band-pass filter(s) with different filters adapted for different types of gases.